Due to the Disney and Broadway crap with The Sword and the Stone, The Once and Future King has been mistaken for a "fun kids' book". It is, but don't hand your kids The Once and Future King if you don't feel they're ready to learn about incest, despair, murder, evil, despair, adultery, despair, war, betrayal, evil, and despair. The Sword and the Stone is conventionally "fit for children", but he's going somewhere with it.

Another thing that occurred to me this morning is that The Once and Future King is also about what it means to be an adult, mainly compromise: Living with sin and imperfection and finding that you can live with sin and imperfection. Yeah, he more or less just says that, but it's worth mentioning because we've said that he's discussing this and that, but what does he conclude? Pretty much just that: Compromise. Accept a certain amount of evil because trying to eradicateevil turns out to be a greater evil, and it won't work anyway . . .